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> 20% (35 chars) of screen space permanently wasted on a always on file browser

That is toggleable. Cmd+B on Mac. I usually keep it closed, but it's just a shortcut away when I need it.

> 4% (7 chars) of screen space permanently wasted by line numbers

You can disable that in the settings with:

"gutter": { "line_numbers": false }

> 2.7% (5 chars) of screen space taken up by a gutter

You can also disable the other items in the gutter to free up all of that space.

> So 27% of screen space effectively dead 99% of the time.

You can also press shift+esc at any time to toggle a fullscreen pane of whatever you are working on when you need more space without affecting your editor's state. I don't know the name of that action, I actually found that accidentally.

Edit: I forgot to mention, you can actually disable the tab bar now too if you want even more space. You would just need to rely on the tab switcher feature or file search to move around.

I would damn hope you can configure/disable this. But why is it the default?

And if the answer is "discoverability" then where is the default-on fuzzy find, default-on command palette, default-on context menu, etc?

My point was not to claim Zed was bad because I had the ignorant misapprehension that it was incapable of being cleaner, my point was to ask why people desire such a cluttered workspace by default? Most people I see using these editors _don't_ disable all this clutter.

I haven't tried Zed and am unlikely to, but I get 238 characters of fantasque sans mono 11pt on my 1200p screen, so I could give up those spaces and still have two vertical panes (assuming Zed supports vertical panes and the file-browser isn't duplicated).

I think lots of people are comfortable with smaller fonts, but I find myself genuinely straining my eyes too much and getting headaches if I go smaller than this, and I already wear glasses (although I should probably update my prescription).

Oh, there's no "right answer" to font size, but the fact that my size would work on a 1200p screen (and many of my coworkers have significantly larger screens and younger eyes than I) could go towards explaining why the sidebar is on by default and the gutter is so huge.

I agree with you and probably have a similar setup to you.

There's a % of people that like to think deeper about their tools, but I think most folks don't care enough or might be struggling with higher priority things at work. Plus, you don't know what you're missing.

For me, good setup is like compound interest that just keeps paying off over time.

> The current line number is in the bottom right, and if I need to go to a specific line number I have `G` for that.

How would you know which line number to go to? You see that word half a screen up, what's its line number?

There's the relative number line etc, but I've never actually encountered a situation where I felt the need to make a jump to a line number on the screen and didn't do it with basic vim motions instead. Every time I'm going to a specific line number, it's because I'm following an error message that references a file and line number.

Moving 15 lines up is a basic vim motion

I can't easily do such mental arithmetic quickly enough for it to be faster than just estimating the number of lines and correcting.

I once tried to solve this by using relative numbers and it didn't help much. I just turned the number line off.

You can close the left dock (ctrl+b for me). The gutter is still huge, though.